12 Days: Fido (2006)

This is what would happen if Bub (Day of the Dead) continued to evolve and then got sent back in time to the 50s. Radiation from space (where else?) has contaminated the entire planet Earth, causing anyone that dies, post contamination, to turn into a zombie. This leads to world war, as depicted in an amusing send up of old news reels. Eventually, the humans win out when they learn the secret to taking out the zombies ("get 'em in the brain"). Unfortunately, the radiation lingers so new zombies are popping up all the time. In steps Zomcom, a corporation that constructs collars that attach to the zombies and curb their desire for human flesh. It makes them placid, able to be controlled. They also construct walls around the cities and towns, dumping "bad" zombies and, perhaps, "bad" non-zombies as well into what's known as the "wild zone".

Against this backdrop is set a sweet "boy and his dog" story involving a boy and his zombie. Little Timmy (K'Sun Ray) lives with his Mom, Helen (Carrie Ann Moss) and his Dad, Bill (Dylan Baker). Owning a zombie on their particular block becomes a sort of status symbol. Their wacky neighbor Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson) even has a zombie called Tammy. He doesn't really use her for chores though, she's more of a wife type. We don't want to know what they do behind closed doors. Anyway, being concerned with what others think is a common trait amongst 50s housewives, so Helen goes ahead and orders the family a zombie without telling her husband who, it turns out, is zombie-phobic. This might lead to some problems.

Not for Timmy though. The two of them bond almost immediately. Well, after his zombie defends him from a couple of schoolyard bullies, they do. Timmy decides his zombie needs a people name. What about Fido? Later, Fido wanders off, his collar malfunctions, and he chomps into old lady Henderson. She becomes a zombie and Timmy is forced to kill her, but thankfully Fido's collar is working again.

While at school, Timmy meets a cool girl whose Dad (Henry Czerny) is the new security chief at ZomCom. Also, he was a hero of the zombie wars. Also, he's sort of a slimy son of a bitch who will do anything to protect his corporation, including throwing Timmy and family into the "wild zone." Yes, this is a zombie movie, but Czerny is the villain of this picture.

Basically, what we got here is a kid's picture which happens to have some gore. The relationship between Timmy and Fido is something we've seen before; Timmy and Lassie, Hogarth and Vin Diesel, Victor and Frankenweenie, etc. There are scenes where Timmy is in trouble and Fido goes to Helen for help that are ripped right from the annals of Lassie ("Is Timmy in trouble? Where is he boy?"). Sure, Timmy takes off Mrs. Henderson's head with a shovel and yes, the violence is treated lightly. Several people die during this one. Some of them come back. Others have their head separated from their bodies so they can't come back (per their dying wishes). I'm saying this is a kid's movie but I'm also suggesting maybe watch it with your kids.

Eventually, Fido gets recalled to Zomcom where he's going to be terminated, but Timmy learns from Czerny's daughter that he's just been enslaved. A rescue attempt follows involving Mr. Theopolis, Tammy, Mom, and, yes, even Dad comes around.

This one's a lot of fun. We got some sunny 50s type atmosphere on the surface. Some 50s radiation cloud and zombie atmosphere underneath. The performances are all note perfect, especially Carrie Ann Moss and Dylan Baker. Baker, in particular, is good at playing a man who projects satisfaction while beneath it all he's crumbling (also, see Happiness). He's the kind of man who can't really communicate with his son, would rather ignore him, but shows a little bit of tenderness in the scene where he presents him with a gift ("Now, I know you're not supposed to have a hand gun until you're twelve, but it can come in real handy").

Of course, I can't talk about Fido without mentioning Billy Connolly's performance. Completely believable, sweet, funny, etc. He's more than just a dog. The family grows to love him, well....still not sure about Dad. This picture is more optimistic than your typical zombie shit. More than anything, it's a love letter to George Romero and the glimmer of hope he provided via the character of Bub in Day of the Dead. If a zombie can find enjoyment in something simple, other than the devouring of flesh, then it's hard to argue they've lost all their humanity. Fido is an affirmation of that. Except they had to go and name him after a fucking dog.

The first annual "19 Days until Halloween during which I will write up one movie every day for the rest of October Spectacular!"

I'm back just in time for some sort of Halloween type feature. I figured I'd be original and do some sort of thing where I write about a different horror movie every day until the 31st. Here's the original part: I'll start on the 12th! Ok, I'm just incredibly lazy and haven't been able to write about shit lately. Here are the parameters: Each day from now (the 12th) until Halloween (the 31st) I will choose a horror movie to write up. That's pretty much it. I'm not watching a movie every day. I'm not writing about a picture extensively every day. Hell, there might be a day where I'm lucky to give you a paragraph. Hopefully, that won't happen, but there are some days when I work 15 hours, get home at 11:30 with a wake up scheduled at 7:30 the next morning. On those days, I probably won't give you much. I'll give you something though, which is more than I've been doing lately. I have no idea what movies I'll include. Hopefully, they'll be something I've watched recently. No guarantees. Hell, perhaps I'll give up after a couple days. Hopefully, I'll be able to recommend the shit I write about. Anyway, here it is....the first ever...sort of....list...on moving picture trash. Really, it's just a list of movies in no order whatsoever.

19 Days until Halloween: Deadgirl (2008)
It's scary what disillusioned, angry young men will do under the influence of each other. Usually, we got a leader, a follower or two, and mayhem. Sometimes it's innocent mayhem; some vandalism, drinking, skipping school, talking back to parents, etc. Other times it's something worse; school shootings, home invasions, panty sniffing. Most often, it's just staying up late and playing video games. Probably less often than anything, it's breaking into an abandoned mental hospital, finding a zombie girl strapped to a table, and raping her. I'm not sure this happens very often so I can't say if the picture that portrays these events (that would be deadgirl) is based in any sort of reality or not.

Anyway, this picture will kick off my countdown to Halloween and it's a pretty good choice if I do say so myself. Basically what we got here is the story of two such teenaged boys. School's not for them. They don't fit it, jocks make fun of them, girls ignore them, blah blah blah. We got Rickie, the overly brooding emo type, and J.T., the more charismatic leader type. One day, they decide to skip out on classes, drink some brews, etc, eventually making their way to an abandoned mental facility where they drink some more brews, vandalize some shit, get chased by a demonic dog, and eventually head down to a basement where they find some girl (seemingly dead) tied to a table, covered in plastic. The girl moves. J.T. gets excited and says "let's keep her". It's pretty clear who the monsters are in this type of scenario.

Of course, the audience sorta needs to identify with one of these numbskulls so it might as well be Rickie. He's not really into it. He leaves. J.T. stays and gets to know the girl carnally. Later, he begins whoring her out to another boy from school, Wheeler. Wheeler is even more of an outcast than J.T. and Rickie. I guess it's good these guys are staying away from the school. Of course, it's pretty weird that the girl is dead. We figure this out not because she's decayed (she isn't) but because J.T. kills her a few times that first night after she tried to bite him (strangulation, face bashing, he shot her a couple times). If the girl was alive we got an exploitation film here. With her dead, it's pretty much the equivalent of Dracula whoring out the Wolfman...or Quint catching and whoring out Jaws. Any such scenario fits. Go ahead, give it a whirl. Ripley whoring out the queen alien, etc. Fun stuff.

I don't know, it's a fucked up scenario but it's believable in the sense that I believe a couple of asshole, emo-teens, capable of this shit. The performances are all pretty good, especially Noah Segan (Brick) as J.T. Shiloh Fernandez as Rickie just has to brood. He's James Dean minus the cool. Rickie also has an unrequited crush on a girl from school named JoAnn. JoAnn dates the quarterback. The quarterback eats guys like J.T. and Ricky for breakfast. Rickie's home life sucks. His father is non existant. His mother works nights. His only father figure (mother's jobless boyfriend) is an alcoholic. His only friend is a necrophiliac. Things are pretty bleak. That's high school for you.

This picture is creepy without being too scary. Violent without being overly gory. There's a naked dead girl who isn't particularly sexy. Is she a zombie? It's never really made clear. I mean, I think she's dead but maybe she's just impervious to death. She gets shot, but keeps living. I think there is implied penetration of bullet holes. We feel for the girl, want her to escape, have vengeance, and so on. J.T. rarely leaves her side and towards the end of the picture lounges about in the basement wearing a Hugh Hefner type smoking jacket. Her bite seems to transmit her "sickness". One unfortunate character has a disgusting mishap in the mensroom after being bitten. Things get out of hand.

The picture is advertised as being from the guys that brought us Hellraiser and Heathers. We got sick perversions of the flesh crossed with High School, so I guess that makes sense. I liked it. Good music that perfectly fits the mood. Some black as tar humor, some dead girl nudity. What's not to like? Eventually, things come to a head. Rickie stands up to J.T. Some jocks get mixed in. Rickie is forced to make a horrific decision. Yup, this is high school alright.

In closing, I can only imagine that this movie will do for having sex with zombies what Jaws did for going into the water.

Night of the Seagulls (1975)

The fourth and final film in Amando De Ossorio's blind dead quadrilogy, Night of the Seagulls, is a bit of a strange bird. Apart from the eyeless dead Templars, this doesn't really feel like a "blind dead" movie. It's almost as if De Ossorio wished to make something a little more ambitious, something a bit more Lovecraftian (this has some elements typical in Lovecraft stories; a coastal town with a deep rooted secret to go along with references to an ancient sea god and pagan rituals). I'm sure the budget wasn't there. So, what we're left with is a film in which the dead Templars worship an oceanic deity, which was not mentioned in any of the previous three films. In the previous film, The Ghost Galleon, they sailed the high seas looting the world of stupid, often topless, dames. Still, I got the feeling they were mostly godless in that one. Also, why the hell would dead things, doomed to walk the earth for, what appears to be, an eternity actually choose to worship a god? It makes no sense. He's clearly not treating them to a pleasant afterlife. The Devil in Miss Jones is the only film I've seen that portrays purgatory as something worth experiencing.

Anyway, continuity has certainly not been a strong suit for this series. In Tombs of the Blind Dead, the first and still best of the series, the Templars had their eyes pecked out. In Return of the Blind Dead, they were burned...the eye holes then cauterized. In some films, they can survive the sunlight. In Return, it kills them. Fire seems to do the trick in every film. Since these guys are blind, one would think not screaming and standing still would be pretty helpful. In the first film it doesn't really matter, as depicted in a great scene, as the dead can hear and follow the beating hearts of their victims. This detail is largely ignored in the follow ups. Another element forgotten after the first film is that to be killed by the blind dead turns you into one. Except for the blindness. That is their own cross to bear. Someone get these guys a blind dead seeing eye dog for chrissake.

They may not have eye dogs, but they do have horses. In the second picture, it's established that, yes, their horses are, in fact, also dead. They're also fiercely disloyal. Apparently unable to discern flesh from bone as countless potential victims steal them away as their tormentors are forced to blindly pursue. The horses can see fine but are only able to gallop in slow motion, an unfortunate side effect to being dead I guess.

So, what the fuck is the weirdly titled Night of the Seagulls about anyway? A young doctor and his blondish wife travel to a seaside village to replace the doctor who worked there before who was said to be getting too old for this shit. It's a strange little village with little stone buildings, a plethora of beautiful virgins, and an old lady that mans the local five and dime but refuses to sell any of her products to outsiders. It's quite possible the old hag refered to them as "outlanders". The doctor and his wife settle in to their cozy new stone walled apartment on the outskirts of town and wonder why no one seeks treatment, why won't the old bitch sell them medicine, and, lastly, what's with that strange procession heading to the beach every night led by, what appears to be, a virginal nineteen year old woman dressed in a white (see through!) gown? Also, what's with the squawking of those fucking gulls? What the hell are they doing flying at night? According to this movie, that is something they never do so what the fuck gives man?

As it turns out, every seven years or so (no, it's exactly every seven years) the "blind dead", for seven consecutive nights, come out of the sea to claim a virgin so they can hack her to pieces and feed her to their precious sea god. That sea god can't be bothered to come out of its abyss, however, so I guess he sent in a party of crabs to grab the remains and scuttle the pieces home. I'll be honest here for a moment. It would be pretty stupid and absolutely nonsensical if these dead templars actually came out of the sea. That is from the plot description on the back of the dvd case. I think that plot description was written before anyone realized this would be just another "blind dead" picture. These guys come out of their crypts like they do in every other picture from this series and I'm pretty sure this scene was just stock footage used from the first two. Oddly, it still fucking creeped me out.

One thing that wasn't made immediately clear is that the "blind dead" only claim their virgins for seven consecutive nights every seven years. In return, I guess the men of the village are allowed to live and bang gorgeous women so that they can keep producing these virgins. Anyway, for about an hour or so, I was under the assumption that the villagers sacrificed a virgin to the blind dead every night, for every year, pretty much until time stops. I was a little confused. With a population of about thirty, at least half of which are old men, older women, and sluts...they would somehow need to produce 365, of age, virgins per year. The math just didn't add up. I actually think this would be a difficult task to accomplish every seven years. If it was just one or two virgins I might buy it. Also, if you're a virgin living in this village what the fuck are you saving yourself for? I am booking my flight today. *

There is a bit of a somber mood that hangs over this picture. It's probably a product of one of two things;

1) it's always sad when a good thing is coming to an end.

2) this isn't really the movie De Ossorio wanted to make.

I actually think it's more the latter than the former. In addition, the theme of not being able to achieve eternal rest leaves me feeling a bit morose. Why are the seagulls flying at night? The spirits of the dead virgins are trapped in them, called upon each night of the blind dead sacrifice, to sing for the new victims, to welcome them into their midst. Not only were these poor fettered vixens horribly slaughtered but now they must spend an etnernity as a shit eating bird chasing down little crackers and eating off soiled diapers from the dumpster. These girls were hot once and now they repulse me. Sad.

This is one of the better entries in the series. Of the four, only Tombs of the Blind Dead is better. I enjoyed the dynamic of the village. I loved Teddy, the slow witted fellow who performed odd jobs for the new doctor and his wife. His first appearence, as a disembodied head in the window, is great. He tries to help the young couple but unfortunately lacks the ability to explain what they're up against. I fell in love with Lucy, the young woman (virgin, of course) that also took a liking to the doctor and his wife. I would have happily taken her flower to save her life or for whatever.

The blind dead makeup is, as always, fantastic. The atmosphere is near perfect (a little too perfect at times as it became hard to figure out what was going on in some dark, i.e. poorly lit, scenes) and the gore, while probably more tame than the first two films, is still splendid. Lots of prosthetic breasts cut open so the templars can evict the still beating heart, suck out its juices, and, like Mogwai, gain their victims strength and, i guess, virginity? I enjoyed this one. It's rare these days to see a horror film where virgins are punished so I guess, for that reason, it felt kinda fresh. I'd like to see a movie where the broad that saves herself for marriage is punished immediately after consummation. That would be original. What about the girls that have sex frequently, but not so frequently that other girls refer to them as whores? I guess in the late 60s and early 70s there was probably a lot of fucking around without condoms and such. The people making pictures were probably getting laid a lot as well...and they were like, what's will all you girls that won't put out? You know what, I'm gonna savage you prude bitches in my next picture. I'll rip off your tits and eat your heart, etc. Then, in the 1980s, all these guys and gals that were fucking around left and right started coming down with AIDS and so we entered the boring safe sex/no sex generation. In that decade, the survivors were almost always virgins while the girls that liked to fuck around were always being killed off in horrific fashion. I think a slut in one of those Sleepaway Camp movies even asks her next conquest if he's got AIDS. The 1990s was a shitty horror decade that mainly stuck by the final girl=virgin motif. Today, now that people have forgotten all about AIDS, it's ok to glorify hot slutty chicks once again. I can't really think of an example off the top of my head, it's been a long day, what can I say? Perhaps we'll get some in the comments. I'm glad to report that people are finally getting laid again and that the next sexually transmitted epidemic is probably just over the horizon (I guess AIDS was cured or swept under the rug or something). I'm not getting laid though, just other people. Anyway, Night of the Seagulls is a good one. I like the title the more I think about it.

*the majority of this paragraph is rendered moot at the 1:10 mark of the picture. sorry.

Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971)

I can't believe I've gone my entire life thus far without having seen the masterpiece that is Tombs of the Blind Dead. Holy shit, this picture has everything one could ask for in a horror film; foreboding atmosphere, creepy creature effects, beautiful women and their naked breasts (be patient!), a terrific score, all followed by a great apocalyptic ending. Sure, the pacing is a bit slow at times, the acting a little off. Big fucking deal, I'll take this one over most horror films that have come out this year (or decade for that matter).

Tombs is the first of a quadrilogy, the others being Return of the Blind Dead, The Ghost Galleon, and Night of the Seagulls. I'll be getting to the sequels immediately. Interestingly the director, Amando de Ossorio, doesn't consider the creatures in his film to be zombies at all (similar to Danny Boyle about 3 decades later) but, instead, they are more mummy-like. This is pretty evident in the picture as they rise out of crypts and organize with their fellow dead. There is clearly an intelligence at work here. Still, this is one of the better pictures to follow Night of the Living Dead. I found it hilarious that the Americans who purchased the rights tried to market their horribly cut version as a follow up to the Planet of the Apes. They re-titled it Revenge from Planet Ape and re-ordered several scenes, cut out almost all of the blood, removed the scene of a child being eaten, removed a rape scene (although, it's still awkwardly implied), etc. There's a prologue (available with the Blue Underground DVD that explains how the humans revolted against their ape captors, tortured them and removed their eyes. Later, the apes rose from the grave and this is their story. Are you fucking kidding me? First, the Templars are not ape like in the least, and Second, see "First".). The English language version included with my DVD was simply called The Blind Dead and, thankfully, did not insert this silly prologue into the film (it's featured as an extra). I watched both versions and was most turned off by the fact that the lesbianism was taken out of the English version. It's removal pretty much renders a flashback that occurs within nonsensical. Also, the dubbing is awful. In addition, no boobs (remember, Spanish language version = masterpiece. English language version = fun time if 6 deep into a 12 pack by the time the movie begins).

The story involves an ancient long abandoned villa in Spain, last occupied in the middle ages by some virgin-hating Templar Knights. Condemned for worshipping Satan, and various atrocities, they were captured and hung from the gallows after which crows pecked out their eyes. Apparently, they were later given a proper burial on their villa where they await an awakening by some noisy tourists who happen upon their un-hallowed grounds. These tourists include a couple vacationing in Lisbon, Virginia and Roger, who meet up with Virginia's college friend, Betty, who clearly has some sort of secret history with Virginia. Here's a clue: Once, in college, Betty pretended to be a guy and then they did it (lesbian flashback). Anyway, the three meet up and decide to take a trip on the world's most unhealthy train (with coal fumes blowing every which way, but at least coal smoke makes for a nice transition to a flashback). Virginia is embarrassed by her past and also jealous of Roger's interest in Betty. Upon seeing some ruins in the distance she jumps off the train (it's also the world's slowest train) and heads for the villa. Roger and Betty yell after her, pull the emergency siren, but the conductor refuses to stop in these parts. Virginia has a nice quiet evening by herself, lights a fire, even listens to a little music on her portable radio. It's the last thing that gets her killed. Templars hate Rock and Roll.

The Templars themselves look like they probably influenced the ring wraiths in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Heavily cloaked, skeletal hands (the one aspect of them I think could be improved with today's technology), faces cloaked in shadow, bearers of swords and, oh yeah, amazingly they ride horses. The horses themselves don't appear dead but I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be. There's a moment where Virginia, in an effort to escape, steals a horse and flees across a field with the Templars in pursuit that was eerily reminiscent of a scene in Fellowship of the Ring. One Templar would probably be easy to escape. Unfortunately, there appear to be hundreds of them. They move slowly and can only find their victims through sound or by feeling around with their hands. It seems the only way to escape is to stand still and keep your heart from beating. Not really an easy task. If you try to run these things will hear your steps and chase you down on horseback. They like to hack their prey with a sword and drink their blood from the still living body. I'm thinking these guys were into the raping when they were alive, but have become so decrepit (in the pants) that they resort to biting their female victims in a somewhat sexual manner (I swear one of the girls killed at the end was close to orgasming even as death slowly claimed her).

Truth be told, the characters are not that interesting. Betty, in her defense, runs a mannequin factory that suffers from piss poor location (too close to the morgue I guess). Roger is pretty much a typical guy; not too cunning or brave. I think my favorite characters were the minor ones. I absolutely loved the morgue attendant. When Betty and Roger are brought in to identify Virginia, he gleefully pulls the sheet off the wrong dead body knowing full well this wasn't the one they had come in to see. Later, Virginia rises from the dead and sucks the blood from his neck but he doesn't really complain too much. I also really dug the smuggler who was the original suspect for Virginia's murder and goes with Betty and Roger to the villa to clear his name. He was a bit like Han Solo actually (good with the women, quick with a joke, a softy overcompensating with a bad attitude), except for the raping. I never really saw Han Solo rape anyone. The raping did seem a bit supperfluous to be honest. It occurs during a night spent in the ruins and Betty is the victim (she doesn't seem that shaken up by it afterwards and calmly refuses the offer of a cigarrette). Roger is unaware as he's occupied with the smuggler's woman barely an arm's throw away. Betty deserves better.

The ending makes up for it though, in spades. I won't go into detail except to say that it involves a train full of innocents, once again, passing by the ruins at just the right (or wrong) time. It's a shame most viewers accostomed to modern horror (i.e., little character development, an overabundance of CG gore, little to no nudity, total lack of charm) won't appreciate this one at all. One friend (we'll just call him Benial) absolutely hated this and couldn't believe my other friend and I loved it. He was pretty sure we were lying. Apparently, a swarm of horse-riding blind dead should be easy to get away from. Whatever, the score is terrific; weird and creepy (I'd buy the soundtrack if I could find it). The sets are sublime as well, loved the authentic ruins and the scene set in the mannequin factory. If you pick this one up (or rent it...fuck that, this is a blind buy if there ever was one) I implore you to get the original Spanish cut. The english language version (besides missing the 30 minutes) has had its balls hacked off and squashed. Fuck man, it's worth it alone for the slo-mo horse chases. Also, the lesbianism.

Shock Waves (1977)

I stopped taking notes while watching movies a long time ago. I found it hard to immerse myself in the picture while jotting down everything I thought to be funny or important. I guess the trade off is that my "reviews" have become a little less detailed, which I don't think is an entirely bad thing. Brevity has its merits. Of course, since I've stopped taking notes it seems like my rate of posting has gone down. I think I'm just an incredibly lazy human being. Here's the thing, I probably watch between four and five pictures that would qualify for a review per week. Since I'm writing, at best, one review per week it would seem that you guys are losing out on my thoughts/rantings/etc for 75-80% of the pictures I view. Yep, that's true. It's also possible (read, likely) that since I'm writing most of these reviews at least a week or so after watching the movie you're not really getting a fair assesment of whichever picture I watch. Well, I look at it this way I guess. If I'm still thinking about a crappy film a week or so after watching it then it must be worth writing about. Right? Ah, fuck it....I'm lazy. October is just around the corner and I hope to, at least, duplicate my efforts from last year (when I posted an astonishing 12 reviews!!). Oh, and if you guys have a movie (preferably horror) you'd like me to write about next month, let me know.

Here's a shock. I watched a picture about Nazi zombies and it wasn't terrible. Unlike Zombie Lake this one lacked gore, contained no nudity (no volleball team, no bush, etc), and no poorly staged combat scenes. In fact, this thing felt downright PG (I think it was). One would think it impossible for me to like such a thing. What it did have was foreboding atmosphere, solid performances, some creepy zombie effects, and an isolated island setting. Peter Cushing and John Carradine are also a step up from Howard Vernon and Antonio Mayans. Who? Exactly. Zombie Lake sucked.

Brooke Adams (yes, the lovely, luscious Brooke Adams) stars as Rose who, as the picture begins, is found in a little dinghy off the coast of Florida by some fishermen. She's suffering from extreme dehydration and sunburn. The story she recounts is a little hard to believe. She was on a pleasure cruise when her ship was rammed by a ghost ship. Forced to abandon the sinking vessel, Rose and her fellow vacationers (along with the first mate and cook: the captain, John Carradine, has already disappeared after going crazy. His fate remains unknown for about five minutes. Thank god for glass bottom boats) make their way to a tiny tropical island that seems deserted, except for that rundown hotel on the other side which is occupied by SS Commander Peter Cushing (I can't remember his name, not even sure he had one) who escaped to the island during the war. Apparently, he's disavowed Nazi ideologies and wants to help the castaways (after, first playing hard to get). Unfortunately, their boat woke up his slumbering soldiers. Too late.

I can understand why Hitler would want an army of the dead. These guys were specifically engineered to work underwater and pilot U-boats. As actual fighting soldiers they don't seem all that impressive. They're slow and their methods for killing are limited to strangulation and drowning. So, not that good in a firefight. And, unlike most zombies, they apparently don't have a taste for human flesh. There are several eerie scenes of them slowly rising from the water, one by one, with pale, scale-like skin and aryan blond hair, eyes obscured by SS standarad-issue goggles. Rip off the goggles and you kill the zombie. They hate the sun. And, yet, for some reason, they only come out during the day. Whatever.

The movie comes down to a survival of the fittest type scenario with stupid characters going off alone and dying bloodless deaths. At one point, a few characters spend a night in a freezer but didn't count on the white guy with the afro being claustrophobic. I usually only go for horror pictures with lots of gore and, at least a little, nudity. Regardless, this one worked for me. Mainly because I spent most of the 90 minute runtime imagining Brooke Adams naked, but also because there was some decent suspense and some terrific visuals. Sure, I thought it was a bad choice to reveal that Adams survives the story at the beginning. And, since she was alone, I guess that means everyone else must have died. So, um, I guess the suspense was generated from when the characters would die, not if. The characters, with the exception of Adams and her quasi lover/first mate, were all pretty stupid. At least, the cook was a drunk. He was cool I thought, and also the first to die (after the offscreen death of poor John Carradine).

Why is it that all Nazi zombies spend most of their time in the water? That's something I don't really get. At least the underwater shots in this thing looked like they were filmed in an actual ocean and not the pool at the local Y (again, fuck you Zombie Lake). I've got one more Nazi zombie film to watch called Oasis of the Zombies, from my "50 Chilling Movie Pack". If you're lucky, it'll be one of the 20-25% of pictures I write about. I'm not very optimistic. The director of Shock Waves, Ken Wiederhorn, went on to direct Meatballs Part II and Return of the Living Dead part II, before falling into obscurity. It's a shame because this picture showed promise. I can only imagine that he turned to the drink, wandered off by himself, and was forcibly drowned by "Der Toten Korps", zombie warriors of Hitler's SS.

Messiah of Evil (1972)

I love the seventies. It was a decade of long feathered hair, exposed skin, luscious lips, hip hugging pants (on women!), and...ahem...lack of grooming in certain areas. If you catch my drift. It was also a decade, apparently, where the guy (Willard Hyuck) that made one of the worst pictures of all time (Howard the Duck) could, somehow create something not quite as awful. Those were the fucking times.

I actually rue the fact that I didn't come of age in the seventies. I probably would have lost my virginity at about fifteen (as opposed to an age resembling something much later than that) to a buxom teacher's assistant or someone resembling Farrah Fawcet. Instead, I came of age when all the "cute" girls had high unmoveable hair, makeup caked faces, and yellow stained fingers from chain smoking marlboro reds. Whatever, I got screwed. Anyway, I watched this picture called Messiah of Evil which features an actress more beautiful than the lovely (then, certainly not now) Ms. Fawcet. I'm referring to Anitra Ford who is probably most famous for being an original "Price is Right" girl which, unfortunately, means she got fucked by Bob Barker. She gets fucked in this movie too. Literaly and then figuratively as she's eaten by a horde of cannibals inside the supermarket (not that uncommon an occurrence within the town center of Point Dune).

Messiah of Evil evokes Lovecraft with its use of an isolated coastal town and also its constant use of inner monologues. Unlike those Lovecraft stories that are good, it's interminable to sit through at times. A woman with one of oddest names for a main character ever, Arletty (Marianna Hill) travels back home to the town of Point Dune to find out what has become of her father, who after sending her some disturbing letters (also Lovecraftian) went missing. Her father, an artist, lived in a house by the shore. The walls of his home are adorned with paintings of ordinary people who appear to be doing nothing more than watching. In fact, one of my favorite scenes is when another young woman (this pic is full of em) is taking a bath (in a tub clearly constructed for this picture) and a group of people are painted on the wall as if they're her audience. The set design, for the most part, is terrific.

Like many Lovecraft tales (think "Shadows over Innsmouth") something is clearly not right in the town. First of all, there's a white guy, with black features, driving around in his pickup and killing people. Probably the first clue. Arletty, on the way into town, stops at a gas station where the attendant is seen firing a pistol blindly into the night. It's hilarious when he notices her pull up; He puts his gun in his pants and carries on as if everything is fine. Then the white-black guy shows up with a truck full of bodies (unbeknownst to Arletty) and murders the attendant as soon as she leaves.

Basically, what we have here is a zombie film. There are hints at some sort of infection, although this is never made clear. In the pictures best scene, another poor young woman decides to attend a film in town, a film which is clearly the worst edited western of all time. She sits down and notices one or two others in the theater. Slowly, more file in until the theater is full. It's a perfectly set up scene that really comes to a climax as soon as the young woman realizes that not one of them is watching the movie on screen. Unfortunately, for every scene like this, we are treated to a scene that just goes on and on and on, with zero sense of pacing. The grocery store scene I referenced above is great and all, but unfortunately, there's some awkward stilted stuff that leads up to it. Tighter pacing and a few dropped subplots would have resulted in a great little picture. Oh, and maybe a new director too...and a few more breasts.

It's a film worth checking out. For seventies horror, you could do much much worse (and also much much better). The performances are all pretty solid including Michael Greer who shows up at the house with a couple of hot broads (threesome?). Unfortunately, I watched the copy that came with my "50 Chilling Classics" movie pack so it's very possible some of the gore was edited out. A couple of the cuts during the flesh eating were a little too quick. Strange that they left in the scene where Arletty vomited up bugs (including what I think may have been a scorpion). Oh yeah, there's stuff about an actual messiah of evil who comes out of the sea every century or so and causes the moon to turn blood red. I think he was a crazy preacher that hooked up with the Donner party. Whatever. I did manage to make a few "jokes" while watching this such as "if I were a zombie would I be so picky as to insist on breast meat?" and "would eating a guy make me gay?"

Night of the Creeps (1986)

How is it that a little 80s classic with a legitimate cult following such as Night of the Creeps can remain unavailable on DVD? It just doesn't seem right to me. I had to watch the thing about a week ago on demand. What a fucking joke. This movie has everything; tits, booze, gore, a classic soundtrack, brain slugs, zombies, Rusty Griswald (just kidding), and Tom Atkins. The only thing its missing is an original story, but it's not like that's a prerequisite for making a classic genre film. Everybody rips everybody off, especially when they're paying homage. It's just the nature of the business.

In fact, James Gunn, who wrote the Dawn of the Dead remake, clearly must have seen this movie at some point despite the fact that he conveniently doesn't remember it. The similarities between this and Gunn's Slither are fairly striking. Between the small town settings, the zombie-making space slugs, the similar tones, etc; it's hard to believe that Night of the Creeps wasn't, at the very least, playing on a screen behind Gunn while he and his family were watching Crocodile Dundee or some shit at the drive-in. C'mon man, just cop to it already. What's the big fucking deal?

Exactly. What is the big fucking deal Gunn? You actually improved on a minor classic, a beloved (albeit in a fairly small circle) cult picture. Slither is a fantastic gem. You should be proud. Along with that pride comes acknowledging your influences which should include Fred Dekker (Creeps) as well as Cronenberg, Romero, and Carpenter. It's ok, man. We'll still dig your film. In the future though, can't you just let us see Starla's breasts? Maybe in the sequel?

I enjoyed Night of the Creeps, warts and all. Let's get the bad news out of the way first. Jason Lively (who made a worse Rusty Griswald than the abomination that is Ethan Embree) is a horrible, god awful, I'd like to punch him in the nards (possible homage to Dekker's Monster Squad?) till they fall off kind of actor. If this were any other kind of movie, say a romantic comedy or Rent, I would have turned the thing off after five minutes. Luckily, this mopily abysmal performance is, for the most part, offset by Steve Marshall as J.C. , Lively's sarcastic best friend. J.C. is given all the fun lines not given to Tom Atkins ("that guys got one continuous eyebrow").

One more thing I didn't really like. The film tried a bit too hard to nod to its sources. Characters had names like Romero, Carpenter, Cronenberg, Hooper, Cameron, Landis, Raimi, and Sally. Hell, one guy was even billed as Psycho Zombie. We get it Dekker. How about next time you come up with some original names so that whenever Detective Raimi is announced we're not thinking of a somewhat better picture like Evil Dead II? Ok, minor complaint. The movie is what it is and I fucking liked it. A lot.

I loved the melding of genres. Part zombie film, part escaped maniac (aka slasher) film, part alien invasion film, and part college frat comedy film. The tits could come from any one of these film types, so I'll just attribute their inclusion to all of them. This picture is full of terrific flashbacks, including the black and white opening ("sorority row 1959"). The soundtrack is terrific and includes the likes of the Platters ("smoke gets in your eyes") and Paul Anka ("Put your head on my shoulders"). Several allusions are made to Plan 9 From Outer Space, including, um, the entire fucking plot. Aliens raising the dead? It's genius! Why didn't it work so well for Ed Wood? I'll tell you why. Technology. He lacked the technology to computer generate good performances, good dialogue, good plotting, etc. I suppose his special effects could have used a little tweaking as well. Whatever. I still love that movie.

The effects in this picture are great and, in a way, the slugs are more convincing than the overly computer generated slugs from Slither (ok, my one complaint from that one). I also like how they get into their human host, lay eggs in the brain, force them to walk around dead for a while, and then explode outward so they can find a new host. Another difference between this and Slither: The slugs in Slither didn't have to go in through the mouth. They just tended to burrow into your skin. Not so here. I love a good mouth slug (not a euphemism for dick). Actually, the more I think about it, Fred Dekker probably should have named a character Detective Sholder. Oh well. Like Sholder's film (The Hidden), this one also has an infected dog. Actually, I can't remember if the dog in Sholder's film was infected at the end of the first one or the start of the second one. Hmmm...

Did I even talk about the plot yet? Fuck. Space slugs land on earth. 1959. They infect a person. He's cryogenically frozen. Cut to "pledge week 1986". Lively wants to get laid, so he tries to join a fraternity. J.C. goes along for the ride. Their assigned prank: Retrieve a corpsicle from the morgue. Instead, the break into David Paymer's Cryogenics lab and unleash hell upon the town. It's up to J.C., Lively, and Tom Atkins to avert some kind of oral hostile take over.

Yeah, the Tom Atikins. The great Tom Atkins. What the fuck hasn't this guy been in? I don't know, but it's a short list. Here's a sampling of his credits; The Fog, Escape From New York, Creepshow, Halloween III, Lethal Weapon, Maniac Cop, Bruiser, um...Xena. He's one of those guys you'll recoginze instantly and not know his name. He's in the "that guy" hall of fame. Well, guess the fuck what? He's dropped the "that guy" status and become a full fledged star in this picture. He's tremendous as Detective Cameron (still, not happy with the names) who delivers all the classic lines from "thrill me" to "it's miller time". Vintage 80s lines. Let's not forget the great line on the poster work above. The instant J.C. leaves the picture it's up to Atkins to prevent Lively from ruining it. Between Atkins and some soaped up boobies, Lively had his work cut out for him. He wasn't up to the challenge.

Release the fucking thing on DVD already. Shit, and if you even think about putting this out exclusively on Blu-Ray, I'm going to be fucking pissed (especially as I'm shelling out my cash).

Zombie Lake (1980)

Nazi Zombies have never been as boring as they are here, in Jean Rollin's masterpiece of snoozy schlock. During the Second World War, the Nazi's occupied a small french town adjacent to a small putrid lake. The french resistance fought them off, killed them and disposed of the bodies in the lake. Years later, with no explanation, those Nazi sons of bitches rise from the depths of the lake to eat naked french beauties....and a dude or two. It sounds fucking amazing, right?

Wrong. Still, is it worth checking out? If you're a guy, absolutely. there's enough virginal bush in this thing (all of it stunningly shot from the bottom of the local YMCA pool, which stands in for the pond during these shots. fuck, you can even clearly see the walls at times) to keep you occupied for at least ten or fifteen minutes. If you're a girl, stay far away (unless you're a lesbian). This movie has none of the details that make a good zombie picture; make up, shocks, gore effects. I think there were five zombies in the entire movie! Each kill was precisely the same. Zombie bites neck, a little red wine seeps out, moves on to next victim. The victims, to the best of my recollections, stay dead. If you're making a zombie picture, shouldn't the zombies turn people into, um...you know....zombies?

The best scenes of the picture were told in flashback as we're treated to the epic battle and, I suppose, the origin story of the Zombie Nazis. At this point, I realized that the entire movie (we're over halfway through) had about five lines of dialogue. I did love the battle scene enhanced by some lousy string music, meek explosions (I think they had prop guys throwing dirt in the air) and plenty of shooting from the hip (something I'm told you're not to do during war time). I actually thought these filmmakers took a time machine and shot a genuine WWII battle.

Cut back to present day and we're enthralled to learn that a naked women's volleyball team are now camping out at the lake. Time for a swim girls. I trust you left your razors at home? Probably the greatest scene in the movie as the camera moves back into the YMCA pool and we're treated to several shots of the Nazi Zombies just hanging out at the bottom as their green face paint washes away. You know, just hanging out and taking in the view of the pretty folliage floating on the surface above, as lake zombies are known to do from time to time. Then the zombies spring to life (these guys must have a severe case of priapism, by the way) and attack the team, before moving on to the town (and never increasing their numbers). At least we got to enjoy a few subtle nods to Frankenstein as the pretty-boy zombie decides he just wants some good, old fashioned, opposite sex companionship. Sorry boys. Unfortunately, he befriends a little girl and was later brought up on child pornography charges. Actually, the town formed a lynch mob instead as the mayor declared "we better face the facts, the zombies have declared war!"

The highlight of the movie is probably the Zombie knife fight or perhaps the eye penetrating scene reminscent of one done much better in Fulci's Zombi 2. Considering that this came out in 1980, the gore effects are extremely lousy. Especially when one considers what Tom Savini was doing at the same time (Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13th, The Burning). There's a similarly themed movie that came out a few years earlier called Shock Waves that stars Peter Cushing and Brooke Adams. With a cast like that, how can it not be far superior to this piece of shit? Check out this tagline: Once they were almost human! Beneath the living....beyond the dead...from the depths of Hell's ocean! The deep end of horror! Almost human! Brilliant. This movie? It's a porno without the money shots. And, it nearly put me to sleep. Wasn't even that hammered, truth be told.

George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead (2008)

Well, George finally did it. He killed the zombie movie. Where do I want to be when the end begins? As fucking far away from the fucking pricks that occupy this picture as possible. The "living dead" genre has always been one of my favorites. Starting with Romero's own masterpiece Night of the Living Dead and continuing through his underrated Land of the Dead. I love the original Dawn of the Dead as well as the remake. I've got a major hard on for Fulci's unofficial sequel to Dawn of the Dead called Zombi 2, a film that features the first ever zombie versus shark battle. Perhaps the genre should have died with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's lovingly hilarious send up Shaun of the Dead.



Romero can't help but instill a little social commentary into his "dead" films. In his latest, Diary of the Dead, he takes on the government controlled media as seen through the eyes of the myspace generation. Let it be known that this is NOT a sequel to his original series. This is a reboot of the franchise to present day. The premise is simple. Several college friends are in the Pennsylvanian woods filming a mummy movie when the zombie outbreak begins. The director, Jason Creed (played by Joshua Close) decides to keep filming. He and his crew travel through Pennsylvania with separate agendas. Creed want's to document the events for his new film "the death of death" also known as "the death of dead movies". His crew, including Jason's soon to be ex-girlfriend Debra (Michelle Morgan) just want to get home to their families. It's a clever premise to be sure. Unfortunately, the recent Cloverfield used a similar gimmick to a much more horrifying effect. Sure, the idea for Diary was conceived well before Cloverfield. For that, I suppose we can give Romero some credit. Unfortunately, and it truly pains me to say this, the execution of this thing is abysmal.

Before I get into what doesn't work, I'll mention the things I liked about the picture. The deaf scythe wielding Amish guy. After hurling some dynamite at a few lumbering dead, he provides the film's best moment when, without missing a beat, he etches on a hand held chalkboard: "hello, my name is Samuel." Romero also takes a dig at the recent trend toward fast zombies by having the director chide his mummy actor for running after a victim telling him that "corpses don't run because if they did their ankles would break. dumbass." Ok, that's what I liked.

What didn't I like? First of all, the narration by Debra NEEDS to go. I cringed everytime it appeared, not because it was terrible (although it often was), but because it was completely uneccesary. She actually tells us that she went back and added "music to scare you". George should know better. Normally, voice overs tend to ruin poignant or tense moments. Thankfully, this picture didn't have any of those. I don't want to disparage the actors too much because I'm not sure if they were awful or if it was just the characters as written. Jason Creed was a douchebag. After running over a few zombies on a country road, Mary (the winnebago driver) is asked by Jason "how did that make you feel?" I'm guessing not so good since she was blowing out her own brains in the very next scene. Creed is the Uwe Boll of documentary filmmaking. He's an ego-driven maniac that would sacrifice his actors, his friends, his GIRLFRIEND for the perfect shot. Contrast him with the cameraman from Cloverfield, Hud. Hud was a good guy. Personable, funny, and terrified of the events surrounding him. His humor was more of a fear mechanism, so it didn't really feel too contrived. He kept the camera rolling, but he didn't keep it glued to his eyes at all times. When he ran, the camera would drop to his side. If a friend was in peril he would do everything in his power to save them, even if it meant leaving the camera behind (thankfully, it never came to that). Like I said, Jason of Diary is just a douche. The camera never leaves his eye. In an abandoned, zombie infested hospital, he let's his friends go on without him because he needs to stay behind to charge his camera. Whereas Hud was immersed within the action of the film, Jason attempts to distance himself. He tries to direct events that are beyond his, or anyone's, control. It was an appallingly poor decision by Romero to center the film around this asshole.

The rest of the cast didn't fare much better. The actors were all playing a type rather than an actual character. These included the drunken professor, the ditzy blonde, the jesus freak, the deaf amish guy, and the rich prick. It's hard to suspend your disbelief and be taken in by a movie like this when not one of the characters hits a believable note at any point during the film. Hell, even the cameos were wasted. Apparently, Romero got Stephen King and Simon Pegg to read some newscasts, but I didn't notice (and I knew about it going in). The best cameo of the picture was a one minute scene with the guy from the Dawn of the Dead remake that had his legs broken and was dragged through the sewars as he shot back at the pursuing zombies. In Diary he had a couple of unmemorable lines while sitting on the back of a truck. Good stuff.

This should never have received a theatrical release. It's barely good enough to qualify as a sci-fi original (I would, however, hesitate before labeling this piece of shit "the most dangerous night of TV"). There were a few good kills (bottle of acid to the head, scythe through two heads at once, shotgun blast to the head of a zombie woman hanging by her hair), but they were all marred by miserable CGI. Romero needs to hook up with Tom Savini again, because if this is where we're heading with our zombie effects than all I can say is No-Fucking-Thanks.

The biggest offense of Romero's latest is that it bored me. I checked the time twice during this thing. I was constantly shifting in my seat. If you ever see me watching a movie with my hand on the side of my head, that's a sure sign that the movie sucks. It's my tell. The people behind me were obnoxiously loud and, you know what? I didn't even mind. I strained to hear what they were saying because it was far more interesting than what was on the screen.

I guess this is Romero's return to guerrilla filmmaking. He shot it with minimal budget, no cast, and a really shitty script. I wanted to say "no script", but I think it would have been better without one. Maybe the characters would have seemed human, the interactions real if they had been allowed to ad lib just a little. Word on the street is that Romero's already working on a sequel to this one called Diary of the Dead 2: You Guys Will See Anything As Long As My Name Is Attached To It, Won't You? Stupid Shits. Ha Ha Ha Ha. Cha Ching Cha Ching!

Of course I'm kidding about the last line. I don't for a second believe that Romero is motivated by money. I think, in the wake of Katrina and Iraq, the intent here was to rip the government's response to disasters, whether natural or man-made. He wanted to tear into the selective reporting of various media outlets. Unfortunately for Romero, for a film's message to resonate, the film, itself, has to be something you can tolerate sitting through. I barely made it through Diary of the Dead.

I dearly love George Romero pictures, which is why it pains me to say I loathed this one. He's the man behind several of my favorite films; Creepshow, the Dead quadrilogy, and the Crazies. I even love Monkey Shines. I just think he needs to step away from the zombies for a while. As soon as I'm finished sitting through the soon to be released, direct to video, remake of Day of the Dead I'm going to take an extended hiatus from the genre. It saddens me that Romero may have ruined it for me. I always assumed I'd be blaming Michael Bay for that.

Undead Or Alive (2007)

Damn, these guys beat me to the punch. I've been kicking the idea of a zombie western around for a while now. My picture would center around your standard "old west" town infected by your run of the mill outer space zombie plague. It would feature typical characters from western lore; saloon keeper, whores, lawmen, a preacher, a doctor, etc. In addition, it would also feature two legends of the west, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Finally, we'd learn how their story really comes to an end. I've already pictured the final confrontation between Garrett and zombie Billy, scored to Dylan's "Knockin on Heaven's Door" (likely covered by some unknown band). It would have been glorious and, I must add, played COMPLETELY straight. Perhaps, after a few years have passed, and the taste from Undead Or Alive has been warshed away, I might git back to it.

I'm sorry if I made this thing sound terrible. It's not. Really. Ball cancer is terrible. Undead Or Alive is just not what I wanted out of the first Zombie Western. First of all, it stars Chris Kattan (Corky Romano). It's pedigree isn't all bad I suppose. The writer and director, Glasgo Phillips, was a staff writer on South Park. Navi Rawat (as Sue the Apache) was in Feast. Brian Posehn (The Sarah Silverman Show) gives the film's best performance. Too bad he was a zombie the entire running time. The opening credits were nice, ripping off The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly by being shot off the screen. Too bad Morricone didn't provide the music, which was consistently bad in this thing. It ranged from early 90s adult contemporary (think Richard Marx) to cow-punk (think Meat Puppets, but only if they sucked).

I'm beginning to hate opening crawls, especially in comedy/horror films. This things got a doozy. It goes on and on about Geronimo who as "the most legendary defender of Native American Sovereignty" put a curse on all white people before he died. This was known as "white man's curse". The crawl is interrupted once, with the line "don't worry. the point where you have to read is almost over." It's gets funnier when, later in the film, zombies are referred to as "Geronimos" or, even better, "Geronimonsters". Of course they wouldn't be zombies, since they didn't exist yet.

The pre-title sequence, was my favorite scene since it involved my favorite character, Ben (Posehn). He's already a geronimonster at this point, but his family just think he's drunk. Again. Stumbling around, kicking at a chicken just like he always does until he bites the chicken's head off (which of course, drops to the ground and runs around. headless. haha).

The main players are Luke Bud (Corky Romano) and outlaw James Denton (Desperate Housewives) as Elmer. They're introduced to each other after sharing a jail cell. In the adjacent cell is Ben, taken in for sucking out his families brains through a straw. The Sheriff is the evil type played by Matt Besser (Upright Citizen's Brigade). He's provided some choice lines such as "say another word and I'm gonna shoot that jaw off your face. Then I'm gonna take a shit in your chin hole." Clearly, my second favorite character. His deputy is fittingly named Cletus and of course falls asleep when he's supposed to be watching the prisoners. Jailbreak ensues. Luke and Elmer make off with some money. Cletus and the Sherriff are bitten by Ben. In a funny scene, Ben is hanged for his crimes and we get to see what happens when you lynch a zombie (sort of). The Sheriff forms a posse to go after Luke and Elmer. That Posse soon becomes a zombie posse. Yada Yada Yada.

It may be a zombie-ridden Old West, but we've still seen most of this before. Navi Rawat then shows up as Geronimo's niece Sue and joins forces with Luke and Elmer. While I thought she was fun in Feast, she was out of her league in this one. She just didn't seem that into it. Nor did she show us her tits. In fact, the only tits we see in the whole danged thing are gernonimonster tits. Still, Rawat's appearence, does lead to a few funny exchanges between Luke and Elmer:

Luke: Do you think she likes me?
Elmer: I don't know. You never can tell with an indian.
Luke: Heck, I can't even tell with real people.

One thing I give the picture credit for is not going all CGI on their effects. As far as I could tell, with the exception of the headless chicken, everything was practical. Real makeup. Real decapitated heads. Well, not REAL heads, but real dummy heads. There's an amusing scene when our heroes herd a bunch of zombies like cattle. I liked the bond between Luke and his horse, Frisky. He even has a locket with both of their pictures, facing one another. Predictably, Frisky doesn't make it through the entire picture. Tragic scene, undercut by Elmer later, inadvertantly, using Frisky's leg to pack a cannon.

I'll be honest here. This thing reminded me of Almost Heroes. Remember that compulsively watchable film starring Chris Farley and Matthew Perry as explorers competing with Lewis & Clark? This has a similar tone and look. Which is to say, not really funny and pretty poorly shot. Yet, I still can't stop watching. If I'm flipping channels and come across Almost Heroes, I'm leaving that thing on until the end or at least the next commercial. The only difference is that this picture's got zombies and Chris Kattan, instead of Farley. And, I guess Denton instead of Perry. Also, Rawat instead of that other girl.

I liked a scene when Elmer got into an argument with Sue about white people and their contributions to Native American culture. "Before (white people) got here you was just a bunch of savages in diapers dragging your shit around with sticks and blankets." You know, I never thought about it like that. It made me completely forget Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

Conveniently, Sue is periodically remembering various aspects of her Uncle Gernoimo's curse. First, Gernonimonsters can track by scent. Later, she remembers that they never give up on their prey. Later still, she recalls a cure. You have to eat the living flesh of the medicine man who made the curse, but that doesn't help because he's long dead. Or, is there another way around this problem? The movie provides this answer in a wicked twist, an ACTUAL laugh inducing moment. Can you figure it out?

Undead or Alive is a diversion. I'll leave it at that. It caused me to laugh out loud maybe three of four times, which is more than I can say about most films. Towards the end, when death seems iminent and Corky turns to Sue and says "I want to have your half breed babies" I blew some soda out of my nose. It's almost worth it for that scene alone. The final scene, is a touching one, when we go back to my favorite character, Ben. He has reunited himself with his family not by being decapitated (which is the only way to stop a Gernonimonster) but by digging them up and setting them free.

Seriously, I'm all zombied out. How am I going to muster the energy to see Romero's Diary of the Dead? This is nothing more than a low rent Return of the Living Dead, minus the apocalyptic ending. Even the zombies, sorry Geronimonsters, talk in this one. Had it been played straight I might have enjoyed it more. I wonder what Geronimo would say if he saw this?

Flight of the Living Dead (2007)

Snakes on a Plane, this is not. It IS a zombie movie. It DOES take place on a plane, however. I liked how the entire picture was set on the plane, with the exception of a few cuts to a pentagon staff room, where the military was trying to decide whether or not to first) alert the president, and second) shoot down the plane. The premise is pretty simple. A couple of scientists, contracted by Medcon, have discovered a new strain of the Malaria virus in a rare species of mosquito, located in an isolated area in Vietnam. This is the rarest kind of malaria because it kills it's host in seconds, but then regenerates them shortly thereafter. So, they test the virus on Dr. Kelly Thorp, the wife of Dr. Lucas Thorp (Dale Midkiff) and then contain her in some kind of bio-unit, and stick that unit in the cargo hold of a Paris bound commerical flight because, apparently, Medcon can't really afford to charter their own.

It's pretty straightforward actually. See, the plane flys into an awful storm system, but the pilot (Raymond Barry) instills confidence by saying "not to worry. We'll deviate left and thread the needle". I think I'd rather him just fly over it, but anyway, the ride get's bumpy and that bio-unit is jarred loose. The armed guard in the biohazard suit is quickly zombiefied, but not before he unloads a magazine from his uzi into the fuse box. Yes, all planes of this ilk have basement like fuse boxes in the cargo holds. If you don't believe me, email the FAA, it's standard regulation. So, now, the copilot, has to go down to the cargo hold to check things out, but the chief Medcon bozo is worried, so he sends Dr. Dale Midkif (Pet Semetary) and Dr. Sebastian down to the cargo hold with the copilot. Evidently, these cargo holds are located at the end of a labyrinthine maze of tin foil lined cardboard, but once there, Midkiff and friend are made a quick meal of (at least they still serve dinner on international flights) and the copilot runs back to the short term safety of the cockpit.

Sadly, no one believes the poor copilot, who has pretty much gone insane, but then a prisoner being transported on the plane, played by John Malkovich, goes missing, so maybe he killed the two docs down below? So, now, the governement agent named Truman (David Chisum), overseeing the transporting of Malkovich, teams up with mumbling bohemian Federal Air Marshall Richard Tyson (the mumbling, not quite bohemian step father in Big Bad Wolf) to go back down to the cargo hold and bring back the prisoner. Only, it's not the prisoner, but a few malarified zombie bitches, who've eluded detection by crawling into the ductwork (again standard on all major airlines) connecting to the rest of the plane. Later, we learn it couldn't have been Malkovich nawing on all those people because he's a vegetarian. It's at this point that total mayhem ensues and apparently, in a response to 9-11, everyone, including passengers, are allowed to have guns on a plane. I counted about a thousand rounds being expelled and there was even a makeshift bomb that, somehow, incinerated, dozens of zombies but left the fuselage in tact. The zombies in this picture make an awful wraith-like screeching sound before plunging into your neck and secretly aiming little concealed hoses that shoot out geysers of the red stuff. I was sad when the nun had her legs chewed off. Unfortunately, there was a "mile high club" scene that went absolutely nowhere, so clearly they learned nothing from snakes on a plane.

I liked the pilot, played by Raymond J. Barry (Senator Dick Matheson, in the X files) who was on his last flight before retiring to a nice peaceful life of Alaskan cruises and Hawaiian beaches. I liked the black character in this one, the professional golfer named William "you can call him 'Long Shot' " Freeman. His wife, Anna, was a jealous alchoholic that got mad whenever Long Shot would stroke his putter while in his seat. Anyway, the pentagon sends out a few F-16s to shoot down the plane, so time is limited and, checking my watch I notice there's only about 10-15 minutes left. By this point, Barry (the pilot, remember) is dead, but not quite dead, so they have to get to the cockpit, so that Malkovich can land the plane. Malkovich once stole a drug lords jet and crash landed it, so that's how we know, very early on, that he'll be the one landing that thing, which is a more realistic spin on Snakes on a Plane, which had Big Leroy land the thing because he once set a record in some video game. On the way to the cockpit, the last remaining stewardess pokes an umbrella through a zombies head and then opens it, and at this scene i kinda got pissed off. What is it with the laws of physics in these movies? a flimsy plastic umbrella is not going to poke through a recently dead skull. Perhaps if that zombie had been dead a few more months and the bone had turned somewhat gelatinous, but at this point in the decomposing stages, no fucking dice, it's just not happening. I was with this picture up until that point, but there's only so much shit I can buy.

Continuing, there's a great scene where Truman shoots a zombie twice in the chest and Richard Tyson follows that up with a gunshot to the crotch area and then Tyson says, "two in the chest, one in the balls, that's what I always say"...and it made me kinda want to hang with him. Even convicted felon John Malkovich is given a gun, but he couldn't hit the broad side of a fuselage, although if he was aiming for that seat cushion I'd commend him by saying "good shot". Sadly, Tiger...Long Shot and wife don't make it all the way...and sacrifice themselves by opening the emergency exit, which, I keep hearing is something you don't want to do when 30,000 feet in the air, but now it looks kinda fun, especially if you're cornered by zombies. Before getting into the cockpit, Malkovich is accosted by an elderly zombie and we think he's finished because she bites him on the arm, but then he yells out because she's "gumming him to death" instead and everything is ok, but it was still good for a laugh.

Now, our TRUE heroes of Flight 239 are safely in the cockpit and Malkovich can finally land the plane, but only if he can switch off the autopilot and he'd better hurry because the F-16 has moved into firing position...and suddenly it does....fire. Well, the missile takes about a minute to arrive, because that's how long it takes to switch off the autopilot and take evasive action, but then they remembered they're in a 747, so evasive maneuvering isn't really in the cards for them, but thankfully the F-16 pilot isn't the best shot, so the missile just opens up a hole in the side of the plane and it's no big deal because they were about to land anyway and it also evened out the pressure a bit because before "Long Shot" and his wife said adios, they opened the exit on the opposite side of the plane. So, now they're level and land on a mountain. I was confused because I thought they were flying to Paris, but then towards the end they were restricted from flying over Canadian airspace, so maybe they moved Paris to Quebec or something. We are set up for a sequel, because one of the Zombies that blew out of the plane at 30,000 feet landed in the engine, but he held on before burning up completely and then after the plane crash landed, he pulled out half his charred corpse and started making faces at the camera. But don't take my word for it, watch this one yourself.

Recommended if your local video store is out of the following zombie titles:

Army of Darkness, Astro-Zombies, The Beyond, Beyond Re-animator, Boy Eats Girl, Dead Alive, Bride of Re-animator, Cemetary Man, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Bud The C.H.U.D., City of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (original & remake), Day of the Dead (original and the yet to be released remake), Day of the Dead 2: Contagiun (not related to Day of the Dead in any way, and I've never seen it, but I'm sure it's better), Dead & Breakfast (awful), Dead & Buried, Dead Heat, Dead Meat, Evil Dead I & II, Gangs of the Dead, Fido (comes out next week), Hell of the Living Dead, Hood of the Living Dead, House of the Dead 2, Land of the Dead, Lifeforce, Night of the Comet, Night of the Creeps, any Night of the Living Dead (even the terrible colorized version), the Dale Midkiff classic Pet Semetary, Re-animator, All Resident Evils, Return of the Living Dead 1-5, Return of the Blind Dead, The Serpent and The Rainbow, anything by Rob Zombie, Slither, Severed, Tombs of the Blind Dead, Undead, Zombi II (the one with the shark vs zombie battle) and Zombi III (the one that stinks), Zombigeddon, and Weekend at Bernies II. If none of these are available, you can't go wrong renting this guy.

Thanks and God bless.

28 Weeks Later (2007)

28 Weeks Later is a great sequel, a great movie. Who would have thought the British would be responsible for two of the best horror pictures of this century (The Descent, being the other one)? This movie is so fucking good that it actually manages to surpass 28 Days Later, a film I really like, but which is hampered by a weak final act. Weeks builds to a feverish pitch and sustains it throughout the entire fucking film. In Days, we deserved a finale that obliterated the fuck out of everything that came before it. Instead, we get a strange homage to the weakest of the "Dead" trilogy and Cillian Murphy going all Leo Dicraprio (from The Beach) on us. We're even treated to a Bub-like zomb...infected soldier. Still, 28 Days Later is brilliant for introducing us to the Rage virus. A virus that takes control of it's host within seconds. What would you do if a family member was bitten? In the time they had left, they're pleading with you. Would you kill them? 28 Days Later also showed us haunting scenes of an empty London, scenes one can not soon forget. If that final act had been better, say... set in a mall somewhere as the infected try to get in, it would have been a great picture.

So, to repeat, 28 Weeks Later is a GREAT film. The movie starts out during the events of the first one. A married couple, Don played by Robert Carlyle (Danny Boyle films) and Alice (Catherine McCormack) are hiding out in a boarded up farmhouse with several others. As they begin to sit down for dinner, there is a frantic knocking on the door, a young boy pleading to be let in. No one moves, at first, but Alice insists they let him in. It was a perfectly human decision, but, unfortunately, one they couldn't afford to make. The young boy led the infected to their sanctuary and now a frantic attempt at escape is made. Alice, always the protective mother, tries to shield the young boy from danger, and in the process is separated from Don. He watches, what he thinks is her death as he continues his mad dash to apparent safety, with hundreds of infected in hot pursuit, as the 28 Days/Weeks score kicks in. It's a beautifully choreographed chase scene and a terrific opening to the film.

Then, the title comes up, 28 Weeks Later. We learn that the infected have all long since starved to death. A US led NATO force has occupied London, and slowly they are repatriating the city. Two children, Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) and Tammy (Imogen Poots) arrive in the city and are greeted by Don, their father. Don has been given a job as sort of a high end maintenance guy. Of course, He has a lot of explaining to do about their mother, about whom, he simply says he "watched her die". During these early repopulation scenes, we are introduced to three american soldiers. Harold Perrineau (that asshole Michael from Lost) plays Flynn, a helicopter pilot who patrols the airspace over London. Jeremy Renner (who has played Jeffrey Dahmer) portrays Sgt. Doyle, a good hearted, heroic army sniper keeping watch from the rooftops. He's also a close friend to Flynn. Rose Byrne (Sunshine) is Major Scarlett, an army scientist charged with studying the Rage virus. I loved the Rear window scenes of Doyle and his buddies on the roof, entertaining themselves by spying on the Londoners in their apartment complex through their rifle scopes.

Children in these kinds of films tend to worry me, but here, we've got two very capable child actors in Muggleton (Andy) and Poots (Tammy). They act as most children would and, here, that involves them sneaking across the river and into the non-secure zone, in an attempt to make it to their home to collect some of their things. Doyle spots them from his rooftop perch and alerts authorities that they've got a couple of "puppies" on the loose. The military gets to them, but not before they make it to their home and make a shocking discovery. Their mother is still alive and perhaps even more shocking, she's not trying to murder them. The military quarantines them all and a quick blood work of Alice reveals that she is infected with the Rage virus, yet, is immune to its effects. So, now, this sets up another scene where Don has some even more serious explaining to do considering he claimed to have watched those fucking infected kill her. The military brass has decided that Alice can't be allowed to live, while Scarlett argues that she must be studied since her blood could hold the key to a vaccine. Her commanding officer tells her to "study the corpse". Before these orders can be carried out, Don sneaks in to see his restrained wife (being a high end maintenance guy, I guess he has a pass key to all areas within the complex. Ok, this is the one plot hole in the movie) and has a touchingly painful reunion. They eventually hug and she forgives him. Then Don goes in for a kiss. Stupid Don. That's a lot of set up for what happens next, but believe me, it's worth it. We now care about all these characters, including those americans, well, only the sympathetic ones (Scarlett and Doyle). Flynn, like Michael from Lost, is still kind of an asshole in this one.

I forget who said this, but I stand by it; For a movie to be great, you need three great scenes and no weak ones. Well, this one has at least four, possibly five, and not a weak one in the bunch. (Great scene #1) A code red is now in effect, and Andy, now separted from Tammy, is sequestered in a room with hundreds of civilians. Mayhem ensues as Don makes it into that same room and starts a chain reaction of vomiting blood and ripping jugulars. It's a brilliant, chaotic scene that is terrificaly scary and leads directly to (Great scene #2) Andy escapes to the surface. The snipers on the rooftops have been ordered to shoot ONLY the infected. This becomes complicated, however, as more people become infected. Eventually, the General orders them to shoot everybody. Doyle, not satisfied with this order, abandons his post and joins the chaos below, but not before blowing away an infected that's about to annhiliate Andy. Eventually, Andy finds his sister and Major Scarlett. Sgt. Doyle unites with them as well, but there's a big fucking problem. Flynn informs Doyle that they have four minutes to get out of there before the entire district is fire bombed. This leads to a terrific scene (not as great as the others), where they have to avoid rooftop snipers that haven't abandoned their post. The scenes of London being firebombed are eerily beautiful and haunting and terrifying. I could go on and on about these scenes, but I have to stop somewhere. Hey, I thought these october reviews were supposed to be short? You're right, so I'm going to try to stop this one soon.

There is a helicopter carnage scene (Great scene #3) that blows away a similar scene in the recent Planet Terror. Unfortunately, it's during this scene that the filmmakers forgot they were making an infected movie and thought they were making a zombie movie as we have mutilated corpses walking around with missing midsections or half a head. I forgive them. The effects were still great though. Finally, there is a scary scene (Great scene #4) that takes place in the pitch black underground of the tube. Major Scarlett is still trying to lead the children to safety. All she has for a light source is the infrared scope on her rifle. We witness this scene through that same scope and we see the children inching their way down a disabled escalator having to step over the charred corpses of the infected. It's a blair witch-espe moment, and features probably the most brutally painful act of violence in the film, an act that isn't much muted by the fact that we have trouble discerning what's happening.

The acting across the board is terrific, but the standout, for me, was Jeremy Renner, as Sgt. Doyle. This guy is going to be a movie star. He simply oozes charisma, charm, and humor. I find it hard to believe that he could pull off playing Dahmer, so I guess I will have to check that one out. Also terrific was Robert Carlyle. In his non-infected scenes, he plays a father wracked with guilt over not staying behind to try to save his wife. I can assure you, I would have been out of there with him and you probably would too, but his children wouldn't understand. The rage virus is a new kind of evil. There really is no fighting it. The best course of action is to hide and wait for everyone to starve. If you run and hide, you might live. If you stay and fight, you WILL die or worse, become one of them. I can relate to Don's decision. I can't really relate to what happens to him after he kisses his carrier wife, but I think it's an interesting thing what the filmmakers did with him. Don is constantly showing up in scenes throughout the film, as if he's tracking his children. It is strongly implied that Don is still, in part, human, still wants to find his children, still LOVES them. Only now, his way of showing his love is to rip off their faces and puke blood down their throats. Still, these infected aren't simply the mindless ragers from the first film. It's almost like they've evolved a little since the first outbreak. George Romero would be proud.

This is the scariest movie of the year AND I still make that contention after my second viewing. After The Descent, it's probably my favorite horror film of the decade. The final shot, let's just say it involves the Eifel Tower, is amazing and has me completely amped for the next sequel. It's better than the Dawn of the Dead remake, better than Land of the Dead, better than any fucking torture porn, and yes, better than 28 Days Later. The director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto) has an extremely bright future ahead of him.

Alas, I'm still a little disappointed that they didn't go with their first idea for this film, events that would occur during the first outbreak of 28 Days Later. British special forces are charged with rescuing the Queen and the Prime Minister. God, a Zombie Queen! I thought I was the first one to think of that!

Black Sheep (2006)

Get the flock out of here!

I wanted to love it. I liked it well enough, but unfortunately, I was calling a cab for it at about 3 in the morning. Definitely not an all nighter. Perhaps I just wasn't drunk enough?

When I learned the creature effects were being done by Weta, this became a must see. In the beginning, we are introduced to two brothers, Angus and Henry. They live on a farm in New Zealand with their father, herding sheep. Angus, being the elder brother, is a bit of a prick. He likes to chop up sheep with an axe and wear their body parts so that he can frighten his younger brother. Henry, understandably, grows up with an intense fear of this particular livestock. After their father has a cliff diving accident, the youngest brother moves away to the city, leaving his slightly psychotic brother to run the farm. Fifteen years later, Henry returns, at the behest of his therapist, only to learn that Angus has been dabbling in genetic engineering. No, he didn't create Dolly, but I think what he did create is probably the next best thing.

Of course, we all know hippies suck, right? Are you with me? Well, all it takes in a movie of this ilk, is for two such fucking activists to infiltrate the farm, steal a cannister from some lab techs, trip as they're fleeing into the woods, and have a little genetically altered sheep fetus bite the guy in the ear, thereby setting in motion what I'd like to call a fucking shitstorm of sheep shit. Angus, has been spending his years, with the aid of a few mad scientists, trying to develop the perfect sheep. Of course, Could anythiing be more perfect than human DNA? Regarding the sheep fetus; I loved it. It was a perfectly fine updated version of the Sumatra rat monkey from Dead Alive. So, are you still with me? Basically, this fetus bites the unfortunate activist, Grant, who eventually changes into a humanoid sheep monster, but not before he can bite Angus. Grant's attractive hippy partner, named Experience (Oh, brother!) escapes and aligns herself with Henry and the farm manager Tucker. Tucker is eventually attacked and bit by a sheep, so he's pretty much fucked, and on and on and on.

There are two fantastic scenes in this picture. One scene involves Angus holding a meeting with investors from around the globe. As they all take their seats, we see thousands of sheep stampeding over the hill and towards the congregating food (investors). What follows is a buffet of gore, with intestines pulled, limbs sheared, throats ripped. These are some fucking intense sheep. And yet, I loved them. They were still so fucking adorable. There are scenes where they are clearly supposed to be ominous & yet I can't help but yearn to hug them. Even when they are savagely biting at our heroes feet I kept saying "ahhhhh..." as if it was time to snuggle. Is that wrong? Should they have been more dangerous OR was that the point? The other great scene is when Henry must go through a flock of sheep in cognito. So, of course, he dons some fur and starts crawling out upon his knees. It doesn't take long before an adonis sheep takes a liking to him and mounts him from behind (Top Secret homage, I'm sure). It's here where we, the viewer, are subjected to a view of the largest sheep balls...er mountain oysters we have ever seen.

Oh, I also liked when Angus opened his speech to the doomed investors by saying "This land was carved from Virgin bush..." Yeah, I like that line.

Anywhoo, there's alot more to this film. Angus redefines animal husbandry at one point. I loved how the sheep dog finally got put to good use at the end. I disliked the genetic engineering angle. I guess the filmmakers here would probably get as pissed as Danny Boyle got when you refered to the infected as zombies. They're not zombies! They're genetically altered sheep men! I'm just not a big fan of the geneticist conspiracy angle here. Why not keep it simple? God, haven't these guys ever heard of a meteorite? I'm sick of hearing about the fallacy of man. Aliens can be evil too! That's a solid lesson. There's a transformation scene that certainly earns it's place below An American Werewolf in London. My review is one large mixed message, isn't it? Well....I recommend it. I mean, it's no Day of the Animals, but it's still pretty fun. I just wish those fucking sheep weren't so damned cute.

No word yet on whether those mountain oysters are included in the R Rated version. I'll keep you posted.

Die You Zombie Bastards (2005)

This is the worst movie I've ever seen. Before you run to add this to your netflix queue, let me finish. Ok, ready? Again, This is the worst movie I have ever seen AND I don't intend that as a glowing review. This falls into the so bad it's bad category only let's take that a step further. This one is so bad it made my eyes bleed. This film, and I use the term loosely, has not one redeeming quality (well, that's not entirely true. more on that later). The performances suck. The visuals sucks. The writing sucks. The "effects" suck. The director sucks. The production assisting sucks. The makeup sucks. The boom mic operator sucks. Don't get me wrong. All of those things can suck and you can still have an enjoyable movie. Unfortunately, this thing committed the worst crime of all. It WAS boring. Mind numbingly so.

How is it possible to make a movie featuring a serial killing, cannibalistic superhero boring? I'm not sure. Didn't think it possible, but Caleb Emerson, the director, found a way. The movies tagline is "The World's First EVER Serial Killer Superhero Rock'n'Roll Zombie Road Movie Romance". That tagline is, by far, the best thing about this movie. Thanks to these fuckers it will most likely be the first and last movie in the serial killer superhero rock'n'roll zombie genre which is a crying shame. Emerson's biggest mistake was hiring Tim Gerstmar (Red's Breakfast 2: Dawn of the Red) for the lead role of Red, the aforementioned superhero. The guy's idea of acting is puffing out his chest and proclaiming his lines as if he's in a bad high school Shakespeare production. He appears in 99% of the film, so you can imagine how old this gets by the 3rd minute, let alone the 95th. I checked his IMDB page and, not surprising, this and Dawn of the Red are his only two screen credits.

Here is the basic plot. Red and his wife Violet (Pippi Zornoza) enjoy living their days as cannibalistic hippy killers. One night, Red returns from killing some hippies. He opens up his bag of body parts and entrails and he and Violet start making out while lathering themselves up in guts. She presents him with a gift; a superhero costume complete with a cape made out of human flesh and a crotchguard with a severed penis attached (there are a lot of dick jokes in this movie, most involving freakishly large dicks). Red, puffing out chest and reaching his arm to the heavens thanks his "lovely cubesteak". Meanwhile, across the world on Hell Island, Baron Von Nefarious (Geoff Mosher) sees Violet and Red on a white trash talk show. They start having sex on the stage and then Violet kills a girl that tries to stop them. So, of course, Nefarious decides he must HAVE Violet and orchestrates a plan to kidnap her. His plan is successful and now it's up to Red to journey to Skull Castle on Hell Island to rescue her.

Where are the titular zombies you ask? There's a subplot involving three beautiful paleo-archaeologists on Hell Island researching the legendary Half Man Half Fish Amphibious Guy. These girls are pretty much naked the entire time (the ONE redeeming quality i mentioned earlier). Anyway, Baron Nefarious captures them, turns them into green, topless zombies with his zombie ray, and then puts them to work on such important tasks like pounding on his freakishly large penis with hammers. After finishing with this arduous task, Baron Nefarious asks "Now, which one of you is gonna play with my ass?" Again, you would think it would be impossible to make THIS boring.

I guess my first question to the filmmakers would be: Why not just make this a porno? They obviously like dicks and tits. They have no idea how to compose a shot that will actually help maintain viewer interest. The lighting is terrible. It's way too bright and there is zero atmosphere. In other words, they have the perfect skill set for pornographic filmmaking. The acting is just a notch below most porn level acting, but they can work with it I think. The film Spacenuts probably has better acting. The gore is fake, which usually is not a problem, except they purchased their gore at a party store. These guys definitely could make an ok porno. Although porn with a story is not really my cup of tea, I think there are lots of people out there that get off on them. They could have even used the same cast because, let's face it, none of these people are going anywhere in the legit film industry and that INCLUDES Troma pictures AND 99% of Troma pictures are terrible (the lone exception being The Toxic Avenger. Poultrygeist looks promising though. I hear Tromeo & Juliet was ok.). I think Emerson probably made this film as an audition for Troma. Maybe that's his problem. He set his sights WAY too low.

The only way this film could have worked is if the actors played it straight. There is nothing worse than watching a movie where it's obvious the actors are in on a joke, only the joke isn't really a joke. Instead of a joke, it's actually just a piece of dried crusty shit. If played straight, this could have been damned funny. Instead, we have a bunch of retards emoting their brains out while winking to the audience; "Look how clever we are? Aren't we clever for a bunch of retards??".

Just to give you an idea of how funny this entire experience was, I'll spoil the two best jokes for you. After Violet has been kidnapped, Red must search the world for her. He swims across the Atlantic and ends up in Sweden. He questions an inkeeper, who only speaks swedish, but can understand his english. Har har. He asks her if she speaks english. Her reply in subtitles? "No, just in subtitles". Har dee fucking har har. The next joke comes at the 1:20 mark of the film. Red meets his long lost father, who asks him to recount his journey. We're shown a title on the screen that says "one hour and twenty minutes later". Guffaw. These jokes didn't even make the final cut of Repossessed.

I really don't want to waste any more of my time writing about this thing, but I will. What else is there? Like I said before, the guy playing Red overacts while skipping merrily from scene to scene. He yells every line. Seriously. If there was a little bit of this, I could deal with it. Unfortunately, this crap goes on for 95 minutes. I suppose the movie might have been moderately enjoyable on a very basic level if Red had been played by someone else. Anyone else. Pippi Zornoza wasn't much better. At least she had a nice rack. Pippi? Seriously. Smut. It's in your future. I couldn't tell if the actor playing Lord Nefarious was wearing makeup or if he purchased his mask at the mall. My favorite characters were the 3 zombie paleo-archaeologists and Kid Fantastico (the sidekick no one cares about). I still wish them ill will though.

Actually, the filmmakers did score a coup when they managed to convince a couple of important performers to appear in this movie. The first cameo would be Hasil Adkins (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things). I guess Hasil is some sort of rockabilly legend or something. He appears briefly in the beginning to ramble on incoherently for a few minutes about some shit. I didn't really understand what he was saying. I do know he smokes and drinks a lot. He also shows up in an even less coherent scene towards the end. I'll be honest. I have no idea who this guy is, but he's billed on the cover of the DVD, so he must be pretty big. Unfortunately, his sagging man boobs are forever etched in my mind. Hasil died in 2005 and the movie is actually dedicated to him. Um, I guess that's a sweet gesture probably similar to having an issue of Hustler dedicated to you and then having the magazine rolled up and shoved up your ass before burial. Almost the same thing.

The second cameo is porn legend Jamie Gillis (Gang Bang Girl 9 & Walking Toilet Bowl 1). Ok, I'd never heard of him before either, but at least HE was in porn. He looked pretty old though, so I hope he's no longer performing in that particular business. He appeared as some character named Stavros and, by far, did the best job of acting. He was the only actor that played it straight. Unfortunately, he was randomly knifed to death about a minute into his scene. I could hear the director in the background say "that'll teach you to play it straight in my fucking movie". I think they might have killed him for real.

The music was umemorable. Paul Leary, of The Butthole Surfers, wrote the score. Really?? Leary also produced Too High To Die by the Meatpuppets. That's actually a fantastic album. Of course, it's from 1991 and I can't remember the last Butthole Surfers album that came out. Maybe Leary is hard up for work. He should ask to have his name removed from the DVD because I have a feeling his name is a major selling point. I'm just trying to help the guy out. The Buttholes might not let him back in the band if they see this thing.

This movie sort of proves that you can't go into something INTENDING to make a bad movie. If you do, what you'll end up with is just, well, bad. Bad movies are not created out of spite. Spite for the genre. or worse, spite for the audience. You really have to believe in what you're creating. These assholes thought they were making a joke. Well, the jokes on them because their movie sucks. I kissed my remote when it was finally over. With any justice, the film careers of everyone associated with this garbage are over as well.

When I say "film careers" I'm not referring to porn.

Just a quick note: I borrowed this movie from my friend Dan. He ACTUALLY bought it. Let's all laugh derisively at Dan. Don't worry Dan. I used to own Cabin Boy. We've all been there.

One more note: This is the last time I will refer to porn in my reviews for quite a while. I promise.